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Are you claiming the impact/$ for the LHC is higher than would be expected from funding many smaller projects? According to wikipedia the project costs about $
by akvadrako 9y ago
Are you claiming the impact/$ for the LHC is higher than would be expected from funding many smaller projects?
According to wikipedia the project costs about $9B, but I doubt that includes all supporting efforts and researcher salaries. That would fund 12 thousand of these smaller $700k projects.
- orbifold 9y agoI think "impact" as typically defined is a questionable measure of scientific value. There is no other way in which the Higgs could have been discovered except through a concerted effort of thousands of people, the technical and infrastructure work in such a project is both very challenging and expensive and usually pays only off after more than one decade of work.
- akvadrako 9y agoYou are completely missing the point. The detection of the Higgs is not the primary and absolute purpose of humanity. That it takes a massive amount of money and effort is a bad thing and it certainly isn't something we needed to do right now. If we first invested in research to make building the LHC cheaper, we'd get more benefit for less cost. That's the only reasonable criteria for allocation of resources.